4th Annual Linux Expo

4th Annual Linux Expo Conference Notes

I just got back from the 4th Annual Linux Expo, held in Durham, NC, and in addition to hauling back bags of free stuff, I also came out with a lot of good information! In addition to what I've written below, you can see some photos of the Expo at http://www.linuxexpo.org

First Things First... Getting Acquainted

This was my first visit to Duke University's campus, and I was extremely impressed! It compares favorably with the best of the best, and, to tell you the truth, it reminded me a lot of Oxford. The stone exteriors exhude conservatism and Old World charm, but the interiors are completely modern. The convention staff were helpful and friendly, and they did their best to accommodate the peculiar needs of tech weenies, right down to providing an e-mail garden. (Although some of the machines were placed specifically for the conference, it was evident that the Internet cafe is a standard feature of Bryan Center.)

In slacks, an open-collar white shirt, and black shoes, I was definitely overdressed. Appropriate attire included T-shirt (preferably one with something about Linux on it), dog-chewed tennis shoes, and the remnants of what must have been blue jeans at one time. Rampant facial hair a plus, if not precluded by run-away acne. And these were the engineers. One of the exhibitors told me that this was the first exhibition he'd been to where it was a badge of honor NOT to have a business card. I went back and looked at some of the cards I did collect. We have titles here such as "Chief Scientist" (OK), "Big Kahuna", "High Muckety-muck", "Scapegoat", and my personal fave, "Keeper Of All That Is Holy".

The Expo was split among three floors: Registrations, sponsors' exhibits, and some Technical Track seminars on the top floor; Information, Business Track seminars and hands-on workshops on the middle floor; and general exhibitions and a multi-user Quake Fest below ground (appropriate!)

As expositions go, this was a small one: I was able to quickly visit all of the exhibits in under an hour, and then went back and had some detailed discussions with 4 or 5 of the exhibitors. I also attended three of the seminars and the keynote address. Add in lunch and you've got a full day.

Seminars

Quite a number of seminars were held, but I'll only speak on a couple here:

The GNOME Project began as an effort to provide a consistent object model for Linux (GNOME stands for "Gnu Network Object Model Environment". The hard "G" is pronounced.) It's since evolved into a complete desktop environment. If you think that Unix is all about command lines and arcane syntax, you need to look at this screenshot from an actual machine running at the Expo. Notice that the windows don't have to be rectangular, and the photo in the center window is from a live video feed. Also notice that active applications can be embedded in the control panel at the bottom of the screen. One of the neat new technologies we looked at in the seminar were "Themes". These are similar to Microsoft's Schemes, but on steroids. Themes not only determine the look and feel of your widgets, sounds, and cursors; it also determines how you interact with them! For instance, sliders can be knobs instead. One Theme in the works is the Jell-O theme... instead of depressing with a click, the buttons wobble. A nice side benefit of the GNOME project is that there is an abstraction layer between the the window manager and the user interface, so that GNOME can be used with any window manager, and with windowing systems other than X.

Digital Domain is the special-effects house that produced the effects for the movie Titanic. They showed us the requirements peculiar to their industry, how the effects were created, and why they chose Linux to do the job. In addition, we were treated to an exposé on the system they used to handle project management for their "render ranch" of 500 Linux machines... managing over 5 TERABYTES of data for a single project is no small task!! Finally, we were shown some specifics of the detailed work that was done to produce the effects in the movie. An example: In the famous shot where the stars are spread-eagled on the bow, the camera pulls back and pans the length of the ship. In that shot, except for the two actors and a small portion of the bow, the ship, the seagulls, water, smoke and people on the deck are all computer-generated effects!

Exhibits

Sponsors of the Expo were Red Hat, Caldera, Linux International, Linux Hardware Solutions, and Solid. Each of these had booths on the top floor (as did the ever- popular GNOME, sponsored by Red Hat.) Other exhibitors were on the bottom floor, and these included Sun, Corel, and Digital Equiment Corp. Some standouts were:

Cobalt Microsystems. Their Qube Intranet Server is one of the sleekest, hottest things in turnkey Intranet solutions! Imagine, if you will, the following: All packed into an eight-inch cube selling for $1495.00! The Qube itself is a shocking blue cube that lights up when it's powered up. (I was going to call it "featureless", until I remembered that it's packed with more features out of the box than Microsoft NT Server!) On the back is a single Ethernet port and a small keypad and LCD panel that are used to set the IP address. Plug it into your network, and you're ready to connect with your browser and start administration. You've got your Intranet right now! Need an Internet server, just connect a router to your network and away you go. I handled one of these puppies and I was impressed with the small size, but more so with the lack of heat. The one at the Expo had been on all day and was cool to the touch, as well as being cool, period.

Schlumberger smart cards and systems offer some of the most innovative hardware that I've seen in a long time. I'm carrying in my pocket one of their smart cards (exactly the size of a credit card!) that contains a Java Virtual Machine! These cards and access devices are mostly used for the security industry, but the actual uses are limited by developer imagination, as with everything. Accompanying the cards, they showcased some access terminals consisting of a slot (for the card), plus an input device for you to enter a PIN. Now here's where it gets interesting... Normally, your PIN is entered through a keypad. Schlumberger also has biometric monitoring devices (fingerprint scanners!) that serve the same purpose. You slide your card into the slot and put your finger in the thimble-like hole. The card contains your private encryption key, your fingerprint provides the public encryption key, and since the card contains a JVM, NO PROCESSING IS DONE OUTSIDE THE CARD. This means there is zero chance of intercepting the private key. Sweet. I thought these would be incredibly expensive, but they're not. Usually for an organization with a bunch of people, the real expense is with providing all the cards, but these are only about a buck apiece for plain white cards and can be re-used. You can print directly on the cards, or you can order pre-printed ones. The demo card I've got is permanently photo-bonded and is not laminated, so you get none of that nasty peeling you get on cheap cards.

Definitely, the show-stealers (for me, at least), all dealt with Extreme Linux, which refers to a set of OS extensions that allow you to create a Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). Basically, this takes SMP a step further, into clustering, where a task is split up between the optimum number of processors and machines it takes to handle it most effectively. If all of the processors on the local machine are busy, the PVM will choose another machine on the network to handle additional threads. Using this method you can create a virtual supercomputer of arbitrary size. I don't throw that term "supercomputer" around lightly, either. This system was developed with the assistance of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the best of the commercially available ones use the HIPPI supercomputing networking protocol to maximize the speed (up to 1.6 gigabits/sec!). Two companies exhibiting this technology were Paralogic and Alta Technologies.

An entry-level parallel computing system can be put together in your garage for the cost of parts. Paralogic can put a 4-CPU system together for as little as 7 thousand, but I'd say that for serious business use (and I'm talking mainframe replacement) you could get by with a 16-CPU system for around $20K. That includes 1 GB RAM, and about 21 GB HD Storage.

If you want to know what a REALLY high-end machine will cost you, check out the 32 CPU Xtreme Xteminator System for only $64,995 from Paralogic:

Aggregate specifications: 445 SPECint95, 349 SPECfp95, 4 GB RAM, 69 GB Storage, 20 Mbytes/sec Point to Point, 100 usec. Latency, +160 Mbytes/sec Cross-sectional bandwidth.This isn't the top of the spectrum, though. Alta Technologies have AltaClusters that have up to 64 DEC Alpha 533MHz processors! (over 32 GB RAM)

Believe it or not, I know of practical applications at that could benefit greatly from this technology today. The challenge, of course, is selling Linux in a corporate shop.

Keynote Address

I'll admit it. I really went for the keynote address by Linus Torvalds, the author of the Linux Kernel. Linus was also overdressed, only less so in a badly tucked-in polo shirt and Bermuda shorts. He's actually a rather nice and soft-spoken fellow, and has a good sense of humor. You know that you're in for a fun speech when it starts out, "Hello, I am Linus, and yes, the operating system is named after me. I am your god."
Linus brushed aside the traditional keynote address, calling it instead, "Linus' Ramblings". If I had to label the speech, I might name it after one of the bullet points: "Total World Domination...and SOON!" (borrowed from Pinky and the Brain and properly credited). The actual speech was short, and dealt almost entirely with technical issues concerning the Kernel. One of the things that struck me was the conservatism in the development of what is actually a very advanced architecture: The current Kernel is 2.0.x, the major number having been assigned on the strength Linux being able to support SMP. Granted, it only ran on the Ix86 and Alpha, and now it runs on nearly every processor, but the release remains 2.x. until something "really major" comes along.The majority of Linus' time was devoted to Questions and Answers. A few sound bites (or in this case, "sound bytes"):
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